• The New Schools Network, the government-sponsored charity advising parents how to set up their own schools, has been criticised on several grounds, but not hitherto, perhaps, about the standard of its grammar. The writer Richard Heller was so pained – as wouldn't we all be – by a reference on the network's website to "nine different tailored pathways" being offered by schools at key stage four that he took his aggravation straight to the top. "As the first education secretary for many years to be a professional writer," he wrote to former journalist Michael Gove (and he evidently meant this to sting), "you may be interested that … this is the finest mangled metaphor I have seen since Labour's 2010 election supremo Peter Mandelprop [sic] claimed that the Tories would pull the rug from under the bumpy road to recovery." Ouch, evidently an equal opportunities heckler. Warming to his task, Heller added: "Personally I would reject out of hand any applicant who promised to create a 'tailored pathway'. There are many possible attributes of a pathway, but being tailored is not one of them." Quite right: we have all got to raise the standard of our mixed metaphors. But do you know, that letter was written in June and the minister still hasn't deigned to reply? And even worse, the pathetic mangling is still up on the network's's website. Bad show.

• I am sure we can all congratulate Nick Boles, the Tory MP for Grantham and Stamford and parliamentary bag-carrier to schools minister Nick Gibb, for celebrating his civil partnership with Shay Meshulam with a knees-up on Ibiza this weekend. And also congratulate Shay – who met his partner at a Conservative Friends of Israel meeting, and who first came to Britain on a short-term student visa – for finding a congenial means of not returning home at the end of his course, as Tory policy would normally require of non-EU immigrants.

• Well done, too, to Tory councillor Andrew Draper, who represents Worlingham on Waveney district council in Suffolk, for setting such an outstanding example of Broken Britain. The Eastern Daily Press reports him as being three times over the alcohol limit when stopped by police while driving through Lowestoft, then kicking a police inspector in the chest and knee while expostulating, "Do you know I am a councillor?" as the officer tried to apply the handcuffs. Oh dear. Spray had to be used to calm him down. Draper, a local lifeguard, had apparently been celebrating the town's air show a little too vigorously and had just popped out for a takeaway. "A very unfortunate lapse," said his lawyer. A two-year driving ban and £800 costs, but no chokey. Bang 'em up, m'lud – that's the only language these thugs understand.

• Perhaps not the best week for bloviators on Fox News to call for the abolition of the US's national weather service just because it's government-funded, but what are we to make of Republican God-botherer and would-be presidential candidate Michele Bachmann's suggestion that the east coast's hurricane was God's way of sending a message to America? "I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of politicians. We've had an earthquake, we've had a hurricane. Are you going to start listening to me here?" she told an audience in Florida. The old boy must be getting used to it by now – after all, Hurricane Katrina didn't manage to attract the rapid attention of George Bush in 2005, did it? Bachmann's aides say she was only joking, incidentally, but how could they tell?

• Scamming hits the unlikeliest victims. Here's yet another: Ipsos pollster Sir Robert Worcester, emailing chums: "Sorry, if you've had the bother of an email purporting to be me and needing money as I was stranded in Madrid, having been stupid enough to allow my passport, money, credit cards and sense in a stolen suitcase, and needing you to send lots of lolly to me via the desk clerk in the hotel." Poor chap. "I wasn't, as you can imagine." Ah, phew. Funny thing is, he doesn't even look Nigerian.